Moving HD from one desktop to another

I have a hard drive that I want to move from one machine to another, but every time I boot the machine up on the second desktop I am sent to the startup repair screen. I know that there is something that can be done through command prompt to fix this problem, but I cannot find it online. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

For all intents and purposes, you cannot move an operating system HD over different hardware and boot from it.

When you install Windows onto a computer, it installs a specific set of drivers to communicate with that PC's non plug-and-play hardware such as the CPU, motherboard, disk controller etc. If you later move that hard disk to a totally different system with totally different hardware, it is likely that Windows will fail to boot because the drivers it has installed and is trying to use are not the ones needed to communicate with the new hardware.

The best case scenario is the computer half-works, and you need to reinstall all your drivers for your motherboard, chipset, graphics card etc. to get it back into functional condition, and even then it may be a little flaky.

Worst case scenario, the computer bluescreens, which sounds like what you are experiencing.

Of course I was assuming you are intentionally trying to BOOT from the old hard disk... but it's possible that your second desktop PC already has a hard drive, and already has windows installed and runs fine, and you're just trying to plug the old disk in to transfer your files over to your new system.

If that's the case, probably what's happening is your second desktop computer is accidentally attempting to boot from the old desktop's hard drive.

The solution in this case is to go into the BIOS on the second computer, and change the boot order of your hard disks so that your computer boots from the correct disk. If you don't want to go into the BIOS, some computers you can hit a key (often F12) at POST which will open up a one-time boot menu where you can manually select the disk to boot from, and you can select the main disk for the PC.

Swapping hard disks only works when the hardware is identical, and sometimes gives headaches even then. If the hardware is identical, you might be able to resolve boot problems with fixmbr, fixboot, bootcfg (boot with XP disk and go into Recovery mode), or boot with Win 7 disc and running Startup Repair.

i must gently disagree with the above; that WAS true for XP, but W7 is far more forgiving; i did this with laptop drives connected to a desktop and VV. - it just starts installing the drivers it needs

but if it goes to the repair screen - that tells me you have disk problems, so be st test the drive with the disk diagnostic for your disk model; you find all on the UBCD :

Hardware diagnostic CD UBCD
i suggest the UBCD to run some diags first - to be sure about the basics
go to the download page, scroll down to the mirror section, and click on a mirror to start the download
Download the UBCD and make the cd <<==on a WORKING PC, and boot the problem PC from it
Here 2 links, one to the general site, and a direct link to the download

since the downloaded file is an ISO file, you need to use an ISO burning tool
if you don't have that software, install cdburnerXP : http://cdburnerxp.se/

If you want also the Ram tested - run memtest86+ at least 1 full pass, - you should have NO errors!

For disk Diagnostics run the disk diag for your disk brand (eg seagate diag for seagate drive) from the HDD section - long or advanced diag ! (runs at least for30 minutes)